The Solomonar or Șolomonar (German phonetization: Scholomonar) is a wizard believed in Romanian folklore to ride a dragon (zmeu or a balaur) and control the weather, causing rain, thunder, or hailstorm.
They are recruited from common folk and taught their magic at the Solomonărie or Şolomanţă (German phonetization: Scholomance).
General description
The Solomonars are said to be tall, red-haired, wearing long white robes of peasants, sometimes woolen, or clad in ragged attire made from patches, a small version of a Semantron, which serves to summon the Vântoase (alternatively the winds are contained in a little wooden jar). When not helping the Devil, they are most often seen around begging for alms, and the collected coins are then thrown into rivers, as offerings to the water spirits. The contents of their magic bag are instruments such as an iron axe used as lightning rod (also as a wand to summon them or his mount), birchbark reins or a golden bridle, and a book of wisdom which contained all their knowledge, and is the source of their power. A branch that has killed a snake is included in some lists. Once they are in the guise of beggars (often crippled or blindfolded beggars), they blend in with the populace so they cannot be distinguished as wizards. However, they apparently have the knowledge and memory of which peasant's farm deserves his retribution when he acts as a dragon-rider sending down his hailstorm.
Schooling
The Solomonari, by some accounts, are recruited from the people. They are taught their magic and the speech of animals at the school (Scholomance), and become capable of riding the dragons. Tradition says they became the Devil's students, either being instructed by him, or becoming a servant to his commands.
An additional belief was that the students were taught at the Devil's school which was situated underground, and that the students avoided the rays of the sun for the 7-year duration of their study. They were in fact a type of Strigoi or Vampire, according to S. F. Marian, who collected the folklore from the field.
Dragon-riders and weather
The solomonari were regarded as dragon-riders who control the weather, causing thunder, or rain, or hail to fall.
One way in which this belief was articulated was that a particular pupil out of the graduating class of ten would be selected by the Devil to become the designated Weather-maker () who rode the "Ismeju" dragon (German phoneticization of zmeu dragon). Or he became the "Devil's aide-de-camp" who rode the zmeu to make thunderbolts. Or thirdly, the Solomonariu would fly up into the skies, and whenever his dragon glanced at the clouds, rainfall would come. But God intervened to keep the dragon from growing too weary, lest it plummeted and devour a great part of the earth.
A rather different presentation is that Solomonari who normally lived as beggars among the populace would occasionally engage himself for a fee to become the dragon-rider and hail-bringer. He selected which fields to damage, knowing which peasants behaved unkindly to them. A peasant may hire a "counter-Solomonari" (; pl. Contra-Solomonarĭ) to cast spells to divert the dragon-riding Solmomonari.
In this version, the type of dragon they rode were the balauri (sing. balaur). This dragon can be brought out of a bottomlessly deep lake by using "golden reins" or bridle ("; ), and the wizard and dragon would create storms or bring down hail.
19th century sources
"Scholomance" and "Scholomonariu" appeared in print in the Austrian journal Österreichische Revue in 1865, written by Wilhelm Schmidt (1817–1901) The piece is discussed as a belief present in the Central Romanian Fogarasch (Făgăraș) district and beyond, with additional lore from Hermannstadt.
Emily Gerard later wrote on the topic of "Scholomance", although she only referred to its attendees as "scholars", and did not specifically employ the term Solomanari or the equivalent.
Romanian ethnobotanist Simion Florea Marian described the Solmonari in his article on "Daco-Romanian Mythology" in the (1879. Marian collected this folklore orally from the people in Siebenbürgen (Transylvania) and the adjoining Bukovina-Moldavia region.
Nomenclature
Solomonar is the singular form, and the variant Șolomonar also listed. The German phonetization Scholomonar which is closer to the latter form was given by Gaster.
The modern-day dictionary plural form in Romanian is Solomonari, and "solomonars" in the plural has been used in English translation.